Here's the problem: As I'm sitting here at my "coffice," about to tap out this post, and I hear a guy at the bar, vapidly chatting with the coffee stirrer to his left: "Yeah, I try not to turn on the news too much." No context, of course, but his solution is just not to listen. It's the "solution" for tens of millions of Americans.

But it's not a solution, because it doesn't solve.

But this will, though that guy, most likely, isn't going to hear it. It's a TED talk by Lawrence Lessig, on the topic he's been flogging, and I've been following, for at least five years. Though his current organization is Rootstrikers, I've always preferred the simplicity embodied in the name of a predecessor organization: Fix Congress First.

It means that whatever your governance issue is, we first have to change the perfectly legal corruption that our electoral system has become. No reform is possible on any issue until this corruption is resolved.

The talk is 18 minutes, though honestly, I stopped listening around minute 12, because I needed no more suasion — I'm already a member of the converted.

The simplicity, the complete moral and logical rightness, of this cause is inescapable. But as I said in a previous post, it only works if you get involved. I'm involved. Please make your own choice to join me. And, you know, Lessig and all the others who've joined him.